


Waiting For My Evenfall

by Lia404



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Artist Akira, Bargaining, Character Study, Drawing, Fix-It of Sorts, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Songfic, Spoilers, third eye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27908851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lia404/pseuds/Lia404
Summary: The Metaverse is gone, but his third eye is not.Akira pours what heseeson the pages of his notebooks, and fills the paper with drawings of what could have been.Closure was never an option.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 57





	Waiting For My Evenfall

**Author's Note:**

> Desperate times call for desperate measures.  
> In this case:  
> \- "desperate times" means "writing hurts me but not writing hurts me more so we have to get something out"  
> \- "desperate measures" means "songfic but not exactly"
> 
> The song is [Draw Me by Sonata Arctica](https://youtu.be/GKk6dStjdX8), for the only reason that it's stuck in my head, it depresses me and I have to exorcise it.  
> PLEASE LISTEN TO IT OR THE STORY WILL BARELY MAKE ANY SENSE.
> 
> Also, I like to think that Akira actually can draw, and his third eyes made him even more attentive to details.
> 
> No beta out of spite, like it or not you get the text as rough as it was torn from my own guts (I blame the song), and all mistakes are mine.

The Metaverse may be gone, but it doesn't take long for Akira to discover that some _remnants_ are left here and there.

Mostly they're in his head.

_Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder_.

Alas, said beholder's eyes have become way too sharp, a gift from a liar that never left him. Akira _sees_. He sees like he feels, and even in the dark, even through the mist, even blindfolded, his eyes never lie.

_Beauty lies…_

Akira sees no beauty. But he tries.

He _really_ tries.

During his year in Tokyo, Akira became sort of a stress-doodler. 

His drawings were nothing magnificent, nothing exceptional. They were just enough to fill in the margins of his probation journal, to occupy the long hours of tedious lessons when he really had nothing else to do.

Surely Yusuke would have had something to say, had he learnt about it.

Akira made sure he wouldn't.

Sometimes, he wonders if Sojiro ever read his probation diary. 

Everything remains in its pages, laid out in clumsy words, neverending to-do lists, and so many doodles, all of these made so true because of an eye that sees things _as they are_. 

The diary was a reality Maruki had never managed to rewrite, at least.

It's ironic how Akira never tried to hide anything from his diary: there was a whole confession in there, that the police might have obtained had they only thought to ask. 

But Akira felt confident enough that the whole story was so out-of-this-world that anyone opening the diary would have thought he'd been plotting a novel instead of writing his daily activities.

Sometimes, Akira thinks Sojiro might have opened the diary. He might have seen the harsh words, the scribbles so harsh they tore through the pages.

November's pages.

February's pages.

Sojiro never called.

Maybe he never opened the diary.

Maybe he never saw things _as they are_ the way Akira did.

Maybe Futaba stole the diary and doesn't dare speak to Akira anymore now, because she knows, she's understood.

Fucking _gift of a third eye_.

He would never forget that night when a weird, deep-voiced and long-nosed man had got him out of sleep and into the crazy "manifestation of his heart".

His heart, it seemed, was a way too blue prison with tacky torture instruments from another age.

_(Or he hoped they were from another age.)_

There might have been some doodles of guillotines in the margins of his diary, afterwards.

"The guillotine is merciful," kind-hearted Lavenza had explained a long time later, the harsh words clashing with the cute and pure appearance of the little girl. "It allows for a quick and barely painful death. Executions are smoother this way. They can be dealt with faster. No one has to suffer."

No one but the ones who had been blessed with _the gift to see_ , he guessed. He stopped counting how many times he had to avert his eyes in this cursed room.

It's all gone.

Except _he still_ _sees_.

Akira shakes himself and looks at his notes. The student beside him is almost dislodging her neck to catch what he's doodling.

He promptly flips the page of the notebook he's using for his lessons. She doesn't need to see the grim doodle of a high pixie standing on the gallows.

A new, blank page.

Akira tries to remain attentive. It lasts three minutes before his pen starts running in the margin again.

It's a face, this time, and Akira hates that he can still draw it from memory so well.

"Oh, Kurusu-kun, are you drawing?"

The student beside him finally caught a peek. Akira refrains from scowling. He hides beneath his hair, fiddles with it, refrain from meeting her eyes, and nods.

The teacher is not paying attention. The student keeps probing in a hushed voice.

"This is such a great portrait! Will you draw me next?"

Akira grits his teeth, drags his eyes on the figure mocking him from the paper, the life he outlined but never seized.

His hand clutches the pen harder. He does not tear down the page. He does not want attention on him.

He finally meets the girl's gaze and shakes his head without saying a word.

Something in his eyes must have told the tale. Akira needs no word to show what he lost. The student gasps, swallows hard.

"I'm...sorry. I will not ask again."

Akira is not listening. He's back to filling the page. The ink drips on the page like blood pouring from his heart until the afternoon lesson ends.

Nothing is quite the same. Long gone are the days he spent working five part-time jobs at once. This town is so small, his reputation is still in shambles, no one would hire him. No one would hang out with him. 

Save for those who want to _ask_.

There are the curious ones, the vultures who keep trying to figure out what happened to the soft spoken-boy, now a well-built young man, hidden behind his glasses.

There are the ones who refuse to acknowledge that he is so far from them. Not above, not beneath, just worlds apart, as if an invisible wall separated them and he was just sitting on it, but never managed to cross it.

He doesn't want to _see_ them.

Akira goes home, takes the notebook out of his bag, takes a long, hard look at the face on the paper.

He's drawn those eyes so many times, his margins are filled with them. Sometimes, they take up whole pages. Lessons after lessons, the same perfect smile, the same pleasant posture, the same faked innocence. Similar to the ones he left in his diary, the drawings get wilder. The face turns distorted with anguish and rage, with a sharp grin and bared teeth. The prim-and-proper hair becomes wild, hidden by a menacing helmet.

These drawings are the worst.

Akira covers them with domino masks, wondering in spite of himself what could have been, had their places been traded.

The Metaverse is gone, and so are those forever trapped in its ugly belly.

But the power remains, and Akira _sees_.

Staring at him from the page, the eyes he has drawn mirror himself.

They're angry eyes. Selfish, proud eyes. Eyes fueled by rage and willpower, the desire to finally set things right by any means necessary.

_Whatever it takes._

Some rare times, in a few margins, a genuine spark of contentment can even appear in them, as if not believing they could be amused.

Those eyes never cried.

On the paper he filled today, the eyes are more genuine than they have ever been, and they shine with unshed tears.

_Two sides of a mirror, spring and fall, black and white, but should you draw me, wouldn't there be the same shine in my eyes?_

Akira shuts his thoughts down and tears the page up. The two halves of bruised paper fall on the floor with no more ceremony, already forgotten.

He ignores Morgana's whines of concern and sits on his bed by the window. He grabs another notebook and a new pencil and tries to focus on his homework.

He fails.

When dusk comes, the same face is looking at him from the paper.

One word is written above.

 _Farewell_.

Akira grabs an eraser and rubs it so hard the paper almost tears again.

Watching the grey lines slowly turn pale and disappear soothes him for a minute.

Then it dawns on him, again, the curse, the longing.

Is it what Yusuke was about all along? Something about art and desire? Akira grits his teeth. Hanged from the wall facing his bed, _Desire and Hope_ seems to be mocking him.

_It's nothing like that. Yusuke's art is his life._

Akira just _sees_. It's not his life. It's-- _the eyes_. His eyes that see too much.

He has to let it out, somehow, when the only person with eyes like his will never _see_ again.

The night is falling, and Akira feels cold.

Feeling the broody mood and the need for silence, Morgana has retreated to the living room. Akira is alone with his thoughts, his sight, his longing for a warmth and safety that will never be.

_Should I draw… me?_

Akira picks up the notebook again and this time, on the mangled page, he tries and draw his own eyes. They're steely, filled with a determination he has seen mirrored on only one other face.

The eyes he draws are the perfect counterpart to the eyes he just harshly erased from the page, another too-realistic doodle he made, always the same face, always the same pain.

He tries and feels as if he's looking into the eyes of a stranger. He tries and looks for the safety he felt in the costume, when they fought side by side.

Danger everywhere, always at death throes, always at each other's throat. 

Akira completes his drawing, looks at it, _sees_ it. It's himself, all of himself. A masterpiece, Yusuke surely would say, something only someone with _the eyes_ could manage. It's all his masks at once, and it's all the masks that the other should have worn too.

It's everything they were, and he wants to believe.

 _If you too could see again, just this once_ … _then I'll never draw again._

Akira doesn't notice when he falls asleep, focused as he is on getting the drawing perfect, showing _things as they are_.

His night is filled with burning garnet eyes, the exact same that fill all his blank pages, but this time they're wide and pained like they've never been, and he can hear a faint voice, but he can't make out the words.

He wakes up with a start to the light of a new dawn, Morgana's snoring body a grounding weight on his feet.

Akira is still in his room, at the same place as before, always in the same body, always the same person.

Always the same eyes that already _see_ too much, even if he's still halfway in his slumber.

The sun slowly pours from the window and into his room and Akira bites his fist to swallow a cry, a sob, an overwhelming bitter emotion he will never want to analyse.

He has failed.

Akira shakes himself awake and grabs the notebook that slipped from his hands during the night.

There is nothing to salvage from the mangled page in which he outlined a copy of himself the night before.

But when Akira flips the page, the eyes from his dreams are here, wider than he ever drew them, shining with an emotion he never dared try to picture.

Above the drawing, three words catch his eyes, fill his mind, echoe in his head, the words he couldn't make out at night, the words he never managed to make out everytime they met, suddenly clear as day.

_Someone save me_.

Akira snaps the notebook shut.

Morgana yelps and wakes up.

On his night table, his phone lights up with new notifications.

**Nijima Sae** : Kurusu-kun.

 **Nijima Sae** : I apologise for intruding at such an early time, but this is important.

 **Nijima Sae** : We may have found him.

Akira's heartbeat picks up fast.

Akira's heartbeat stops at once.

When Akira packs that day, he removes all his schoolbooks, keeps only one notebook, a few pens, grabs Morgana.

He calls his parents from the door to say goodbye, they ignore him, and the morning routine goes on until the crossroads.

He sees the street on the right leading to his school.

He sees the street on the left leading to the station.

Morgana doesn't dare ask when Akira turns left. He doesn't comment when Akira swipes his card and grabs a ticket.

Morgana has stopped trying to talk sense into him.

Morgana has not seen the familiar, menacing red eye glowing at him from the phone when he put it in his bag after reading Nijima's messages.

Akira boards the first train to Tokyo. He still has so much to _see_.

_Someone to draw._

**Author's Note:**

> Did you ever notice how Goro always gets bull's eye when you invite him for darts in Kichijoji?
> 
> He might be really good.  
> Or he might simply have third eye too.


End file.
